April 2, 2021 • 44 mins
A spy named Mio is called to a secret meeting in Paris. The Israeli government — and its spy agency, Mossad — has decided that Herbert Cukurs, "The Butcher of Latvia", one of the most savage and prolific Nazi killers, must be tracked down and assassinated in South America, where's he's now living. Mio must assume a secret identity, fly to Brazil, hunt down The Butcher and gain his trust, maybe even befriend him. The German government is considering an amnesty law for all the murderers of the Holocaust and Mio must complete his mission and send a message to the world before it's too late.
This is a story about a spy and a murderer. In the history of espionage, this case of the undercover agent and the man known as The Butcher of Latvia is unique. It has many of the things that can fascinate us about spies: the tradecraft, letters in invisible ink, intrigue in places around the world - in this case, Paris, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Montevideo, Uruguay, and Rio de Janeiro. There are recon missions, disguises, fake passports, shooting contests, a kill team trained in a special martial arts called Krav Maga. There's a body in a trunk. And a drug called Librium that one agent takes so he doesn’t sweat and appear nervous. There’s a psychiatrist who tries to psychoanalyze Nazis. Hitler even makes an appearance.
When we think of assassinations, we tend to think of some awful moments in history. We think about Lee Harvey Oswald and Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Sirhan Sirhan and Robert Kennedy lying in a pool of blood. We think about James Earl Ray and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. And the start of World War One, when an assassin killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
But this is something different. This is the story of a spy tries to kill someone for a good reason: to prevent crimes against humanity and to close a chapter on something that happened in the spy’s own life. This mission was personal, at least to the agent who was the lead operative. His name was Mio.
This is unique. Spy missions are never personal. They’re supposed to be clinical, unemotional. This operation was like that for some of its architects, but it wasn’t like that at all for Mio.
It also had a target who, at first read, seems completely evil. A Nazi killer. His name was Herbert Cukurs and he’d betrayed people who’d once been his friends and neighbors. He’d led them to their deaths — at gunpoint — and sometimes killed them, point blank. He had on his hands the blood of literally thousands of innocent victims. Some of these people had really admired Herbert Cukurs and even thought of him as a hero. Which, oddly enough, he’d once been.
All of this is wrapped up in World War II and the Holocaust and genocide law. The effects of the mission are still with us today. It’s had this secret effect on our lives that nobody really knows about.
“Good Assassins: Hunting the Butcher" came out of Stephan Talty's work on a related book, The Good Assassin. Explore other parts of this story in the book: Buy The Good Assassin
• Written and Hosted by STEPHAN TALTY
• Produced and Directed by SCOTT WAXMAN and JACOB BRONSTEIN
• Executive Producers: SCOTT WAXMAN and MARK FRANCIS
• Story Editor: JACOB BRONSTEIN
• Editorial direction: SCOTT WAXMAN and MANGESH HATTIKUDUR
• Editing, mixing, and sound design: MARK FRANCIS
• With the voices of: NICK AFKA THOMAS, OMRI ANGHEL, ANDREW POLK, MINDY ESCOBAR-LEANSE, STEVE ROUTMAN, STEFAN RUDNICKI
• Theme Music by TYLER CASH
• Archival Researcher: ADAM SHAPIRO
• Thanks to OREN ROSENBAUM
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion podcasts. This is a story about a spy and
a murderer. I first heard about it a few years
ago when I was reading a book about Massad, the
(00:28):
Israeli spy agency. I do a lot of that reading
about espionage. I've always loved spies. At one point, I'd
even wanted to be one. When I graduated from college,
I thought about applying to the c I A. Some
of my classmates were doing it, and I thought, why not.
Maybe I could live in a foreign city, Berlin or Cairo.
(00:51):
It would be an adventure. But then I realized I'd
make a pretty terrible spy. First of all, I'm not
really good at keeping secrets. I'm not especially good under
pressure either, And some of the questionable things that the
CIA had done around the world, Yeah, that played a
role too. So instead, I joined the Miami Herald newspaper
(01:13):
and became a journalist. Years later, I ended up writing
about spies, even a couple of books. I loved their world.
The idea of one man or one woman playing this
invisible role in history and doing it with a kind
of flare. Espionage is important, but it's also just cool.
(01:36):
So in this book, I was reading about Massad a
few years ago. The author mentioned in operation I'd never
heard about. It was unlike any of the missions I
had studied in a few important ways. My first thought was,
this is weird. I was immediately hooked. I think it's
fair to say that in the history of espionage, this
case of the undercover agent and the man known as
(01:59):
the book Ture of Latvia is unique. It still has
all the things that fascinate me about spies, the tradecraft,
letters in invisible ink, intrigue in places around the world,
in this case Paris, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Montevideo, Uruguay, and
Rio de Janeiro. There were recondissions, disguises, fake passports, shooting contests,
(02:25):
a kill team training in a specially martial arts called
krav magaw. There was a body and a leather trunk,
and a drug that one agent takes so he doesn't
sweat and appear nervous. There's a psychiatrist who tries to
psychoanalyze Nazis Hitler even makes an appearance. But there are
(02:46):
even otter things too. What makes this story so different,
first of all, is that it's about an assassination plot,
which are usually bad things. When I think of assassinations.
I think of some awful moments history. I think about
Lee Harvey Oswald and Deely Plaza in Dallas, President of
the United States, and as he turned left, two or
(03:07):
three shots rang up Sir Han, Sir Hand and Robert
Kennedy lying in a pool of blood. Martin Good. I
think about Jeans Ray and Martin Luther King Jr. On
the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. I have some
very sad news for all of you, and that is
(03:29):
that Martin Luther King and was shot and was killed
tonight and the start of World War One when an
assassin killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But this was something different.
This was the story of the spy was going to
(03:49):
try and kill someone for a very good reason, to
prevent crimes against humanity, and to close the chapter on
something that happened in the spy's own life. This mission
was personal, at least the agent who was the lead operative.
His name was Mio. Again, this is unique. Spy missions
(04:14):
are never personal. They're not supposed to be. They're supposed
to be clinical, unemotional. This operation was like that for
some of its architects. But it wasn't like that at
all for MEO. It also had a target who had
first read seems completely evil. His name was Herbert Suckers,
(04:36):
and he betrayed people who had once spend his friends
and neighbors. He led them to their desks at gunpoint
and sometimes killed them point blank. The machine gun he
had on his hands the blood of literally thousands of
innocent victims. These were people, some of whom had really
(04:56):
admired Herbert Suckers, thought of him as a hero, which,
oddly enough, he'd once been. All of this is wrapped
up in World War Two and the Holocaust and genocide law.
The effects of the mission are still with us today.
It's had this secret impact on our lives that nobody
(05:18):
really knows about. I couldn't get this story out of
my head, so I wrote a book about it. It's
called The Good Assassin. After the book was published in
two thousand nine, honestly, I thought I was done with
the whole thing. It's spent two years looking into the mission,
traveling to Israel, interviewing MASSAD agents, pouring through archives in
(05:41):
Latvia and Brazil and Israel, totally immersing myself. I was
done with it. What else was there to say. Apparently
something Because I kept thinking about the main characters. I
had questions about them, puzzles I hadn't been able to
solve in the book. But I just couldn't get out
of my head. And my book had brought people out
(06:03):
of the woodwork were contacting me, giving me new information,
things I'd never heard before. But we're slowly helping me
to peel away the layers and get closer to the
core of this story. At first, I thought, forget it.
No way am I going back to all that. The
Nazis crimes were so horrible. I didn't want to revisit them.
(06:25):
I didn't want to wait through all that violence again.
But after a few months I changed my mind. Maybe
I could solve those puzzles that were still bothering me,
put them to rest. I realized I had to try,
So that's why I'm here doing this podcast. I'm glad actually,
because the story of the Hunt for the Butcher of
(06:48):
Latvia wasn't what I thought it was. It was even
stranger than I had first imagined. What I found surprised me.
So let me tell you about the spy. His real
name was Yakov, my dad, but everyone called him Mio.
(07:11):
And there are a few things you should know about
Mio right off the bat. First of all, he was Jewish.
He'd grown up in Germany in the thirties as Hitler
was just beginning to gain power. As a young boy,
Mio so Nazis marching in the streets. He listened as
his teachers began repeating Hitler's lies. It seemed to him
that violence was in the air. The mission in Brazil
(07:34):
and later Puruguay was so personal for me, or because
of his childhood, because of his background. That's Gad Shimron.
He's a former Massad agent who knew me. Oh well.
I met him in Tel Aviv when I went to
research this story. No, I mean he was born in
so that's called What's up time. It was a German
(07:56):
town to a very German Jewish family. I mean, his
father was a very famous doctor, wearing the iron cross
of the Germany Burial Army and for his gallant service
in the First World War as a medical officer on
the front Light and his parents regarden themselves as pure Germans,
(08:18):
Jewish Germans, but Germans. And when the Nazis came to
Barrow in thirty three, and the father said, nothing he's
going to happen to me, because I'm what they call
it German front kempt further, which means frontline soldier, and
he felt, you know that in the it's a wave
of anti Semitism, but it will it will die away,
and nothing will happen me. On the other hand, as
(08:40):
a teenager he went to school, he was exposed to
the terrible expressions of anti Semitism and investigations of Jews,
and he came to his parses said I'm not going
to stay here, I'm going away. So Mea was worried.
(09:06):
He didn't want to be in Germany anymore. He saw
bad things coming. He asked his parents if he could leave,
and finally, when he become a teenager, they let him
go to Palestine, which would later become Israel. Then they
managed to arrange for him a scholarship in a very
good and famous high school in Haifa, and Mio went
(09:28):
away at the age of what he was fourteen maybe fifteen,
went away from his family alone to a new country
with a new language, with a new atmosphere and friends, etcetera.
And he grew up in this and h then the
Second World broke out, so Mio spent the years before
World War Two safe and sound. When the war came,
(09:51):
he volunteered for the British Army and saw some action,
but he never made it back to Germany. His parents
sent me a postcards letting in know they were okay.
They were still in Germany, hoping for the best. But
then the postcard stopped and Meal knew that something had
gone terribly wrong. And all his correspondence and the vacation
(10:15):
this family was cut off, but totally, and only later
after the war he learned that his parents were both
of them were burned in Nazi concentration camps. And it's
true that you know the Nazist game his father the
honor of because it was iron cross the front. Kemper
(10:36):
the game in the honor of being on the last
transports being sent from breast Law to the concentration camps.
I think in night Meal always regretted not being able
(11:01):
to help his mother and father escape. He had nightmares
about them. He was a private guy, so it's not
like he would tell you about it, but that feeling
of not being there when his parents needed him most,
it never left him. After his military career was over.
Mea was recruited by Massad, these really spy agency. He
(11:23):
was a patriot, so he agreed to join. I'm Steven
Talty and this is good assassin's hunting the butcher. So
(11:49):
he's the first months to find and not being put
forward trial, the second thought, most to find, and lastly
and healing. We must swoll was this shameful causes the
end of a trail of blood and horror, the end
of a man whose name will be written in it
for me Episode one, The Spy and the Murderer. The
(12:26):
second thing you should know about Meo was that he
didn't look like a spy. I mean he really didn't.
At the time our story takes place the mid sixties,
he was in his forties. He was overweight, he was
balden ing. He looked maybe like an accountant or a
vice president of a bank. And when he spoke, his
voice was a little high. He was shy, and he
(12:47):
found it hard to talk to people. If you got
to look at him, you wouldn't be impressed. Even Mio's
son told me that when I met him in Israel,
he'd walk right past my father. He said, I never
think twice about at it. In the early sixties, MASSAD
was just beginning to gain a reputation around the world.
Its operatives were tough, physically fit, methodical. Some of their
(13:11):
missions were controversial, and they remained controversial today, but very
few people doubted that their agents were among the best
in the world lethal when they had to be. That
wasn't meo, It just wasn't a skill set. His skill
set was looking boring anonymous. When he assumed a false
identity for a mission, that became his real identity. Mia
(13:33):
was known for diving into his cover stories with conviction.
That was a little scary. His son told me that
when Mio left on a mission, he wasn't their father anymore.
He become this different person. That Meal was a legend.
Here's get him wrong again, Gad. He looks like a spy.
He's tall, lean, handsome. If he played a secret agent
(13:55):
in a movie, you'd believe it. In our conversation, Gad
stressed one thing about me, how he could disappear into
a character. He had this special characteristic of being able
to dive into the person he was supposed to be
for this mission, which is not that easy. You know,
people don't understand how difficult it is to really ignurse
(14:19):
in yourself all the necessary characteristics for playing the new
person you are using for the operation and neo. First
of all, he was, of course it was very intelligent.
He knew how to improvise what was a good actor.
But also he had a very good cosmopolitan European background,
(14:40):
which man. He spoke German fluently, of course, very well English,
very well French. And they say that he for many
years he held the Mossade record for a false stolen
acquired identities. That he had more than a hundred sixty
different identities during this time. That she's quite a number.
(15:05):
Some agents hate going undercover. Pretending to be someone else
can get stressful, especially when one slip could lead to disaster,
even death. But Meal actually seemed to look forward to
these kinds of missions. He liked becoming other people. This
is what Meal had to say about playing a role.
We've had an actor read me as parts, but these
are direct quotes in his own words. In my daily life,
(15:31):
I was quiet, introverted man, not particularly bushy or demanding.
It's a minute I on the two K a mission
I would become different person. I felt confident, even assertive,
and had the capacity to strike up conversations and gain
(15:51):
the trust of people that I met. So Meo didn't
look like a spy, but he was really good at
the work. By the sixties, Mio had made himself into
one of the best undercover ages in the world, but
he still had a lot of guilt about what happened
to his mother and father. He left them at the
key moment, the pain lingered, and that's what makes the
(16:13):
next part so hard to believe. Imagine your Meo and
one day Massad calls you into a meeting. You don't
know what it's about, but it turns out they have
a mission for you, a chance to get justice for
your mother and father and for the other six million
Jews murdered during the war. The mission is simple, to
(16:36):
arrange the death of one man, a Nazi killer named
Herbert Zuckers. Zukers had been an aviation hero before the war.
People called him the Latvian Lindburgh. In his own way,
he was just as unusual as Mio was. There's a catch,
of course. The mission isn't going to be easy. The
man you're going after is suspicious, like really suspicious. He
(17:00):
sees assassins around every corner. It's going to be dangerous.
It's possible that you might not come back. But it
really is a once in a lifetime chance, something that
many of us perhaps dream of writing the wrongs of
the past, a chance in a way, at redemption. So
(17:22):
bo I was pretty confident. I understood him. Who doesn't
want a second chance to make things right with your
loved ones, not to mention the larger picture getting justice
for the six million. But even after spending all those
months doing the research for my book, I still didn't
get the other main character, Herbert Sukers. Yes, he had
(17:45):
colluded with the Nazis and committed horrible war crimes. But
why had he changed from this respected pilot would traveled
to Palestine and even praise what he observed there to
this monster? What had driven him to transform, to betray
so many of his countrymen? And importantly, why did Sukers
(18:06):
have supporters around the world even today? Why did some
people believe he was innocent? They were certainly critics of
Assad that said they were wrong to have gone after him.
Sucers was a puzzle, a dark, twisted puzzle, and I
had to figure him out. So let me tell you
(18:27):
about that meeting where Mio learned about the operation, the
meeting that changed Meal's life. Of course, spy missions are secret,
that's kind of the point. But in looking into this
operation I found something odd. Years afterwards, Mio talked publicly
about it. Massad must have given their permission. How he
convinced them to do that, I have no idea. It's
(18:49):
very rare for any spy agency, let alone Massad, to
sign off on an agent telling their secrets. But you'll
hear his words and that of the other agents, and
even the target. We've got an actress to read some
of their words where recordings aren't available for once, you'll
get to hear the inside story of a spy mission
from beginning to end. So it's September one, nineteen sixty four, Paris,
(19:17):
where Mio lives. The meeting is set for that morning.
September is a great time to be in France. It's
cool and everyone has just returned from their August holiday,
so everyone has a little color. He refreshed. Meo walked
the streets on his way to the meeting. He was
enjoying the day. He was also looking for tales during
(19:40):
the Cold War Paris wasn't the favorite city for spies.
That was probably Berlin. The city was still populated by
operatives from many different agencies, and Mio had to make
sure none of them was following him. Neo stopped in
front of the Radio France building checked out the pedestrians
people lingering on steps. When he was satisfied that he
(20:02):
wasn't being tailed, he started walking again. He found the
building he was looking for. He was on the Avenue
day Verside, a beautiful boulevard, one of the city's richest neighborhoods.
He ducked into the lobby, waved at the concierge, and
went up to the apartment where his boss was waiting.
Joseph your Ree met him at the door. Uri was
(20:23):
the head of Massad's Special operations unit code named Cesarea.
Caesaria still exists today. It's an elite undercover unit that
plants agents in foreign countries. It sends its men on
sabotage missions, and it plans and carries out targeted killings
of those that Israel considers to be its enemies. It's
secret and what it does is highly classified. Youri was
(20:48):
a charming guy, very loyal. He had lots of friends.
He was popular inside Massad. He knew how to work
a room. Nea was the opposite. He was an outsider
at the agency and it bothered him. When he opened
the door, he read said something strange. From this moment onwards.
Your name is Anton Kunzla with a battle style to
(21:11):
getting used to it. Neo didn't say anything. As I
mentioned before, he was a quiet guy. He walked into
the room and saw another agent, Michael not his real name,
sitting at a small table. He nodded to Michael sat
down towards some coffee. You, Reid followed. The three sipped
the coffee before getting down to business. You reeve got
(21:32):
it started. You must be wondering why I summoned you
him and in such a heavy we have received final
confirmation about the Nazi woe criminal who lives in one
of the South American countries. Israel had decided to hunt
down one of the Holocaust's most savage killers. The target
(21:54):
was Herbert Suckers. He was a Latvian in the small
country that sits between Russia and Germany. I'll tell you
more about Sukers in the next episode. But even though
he became a war criminal, He'd led a fascinating life
before World War Two. He'd been a world class aviator,
the Latvian Lindbergh. He'd flown aircraft he'd built himself through
(22:14):
sand and snowstorms all the way to the East coast
of Africa, Japan, the Middle East. He was brave, adventurous.
But that was before the war. When the Germans invaded,
Zukers had changed. According to Massad, he'd become a beast,
a mass murderer. He helped Hitler's forces killed thirty thousand
(22:35):
Jewish men, women and children, and actions that wiped out
over of Latvia's Jews. The survivors gave him a name
after the war, the Butcher of Latvia, and Massad had
decided to hunt him down. There was another reason for
the mission, which I'll get into a little later. It's
something that I found almost unbelievable, a part of history
(22:57):
that seems so bizarre to me that it couldn't have
been ill. But in nineteen sixty four, the Israelis decided
that Herbert Sukers had to die. Your Reef gave MEO
a little background on the butcher. He fled to Brazil
ninety six after the war ended, with his wife and children,
and one unexpected guest I'll tell you about later. Your
(23:19):
reef told the two agents that the butcher was living
in a house sal Paulo. You know, a small boat
rental business. The cater to the locals and to tourists.
Meal listened to your reef talk. He looked calm. You
always looked calm. But he wasn't calm. He was thinking
about the past. I felt my health race and my
(23:40):
adrenaline level skyrocket. Suddenly, so many different thoughts ran through
my mind. I released a deep breath. Having been born
in Germany and having lost both parents in the Holocaust,
I needed no lengthy, detailed explanations of that terrible time.
(24:01):
My father, a well known doctor in our hometown, served
during the First World War as a medical officer in
the Prussian Army, and for his service in the cruel
battles of Balato on the Western Front, he was awarded
the Iron Cross. This fact did not stop the Nazis
(24:21):
from sending him to his death entat concentration camp. My
mother was deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered as
part of what the Nazis and their battles turned the
final solution to the Jewish problem. For me, Oh, this
(24:43):
would be a mission unlike any of the others had
gone on. This was personal. He knew that MISSAD didn't
carry out many operations against escape war criminals. Israel was
only sixteen years old at the time, and there are
other things to worry about, mainly its own survival. The
agency didn't have time to settle old scores. In fact,
(25:04):
this would be the first time we know about that.
His spies were going to set out to kill a
Nazi war criminal at a Fike men they kidnapped, but
Sucers they were determined to kill you. Reeve added some
more details. Sucers was six or four years old, but
he was still a powerful guy, built like a tank.
You reve described him to the two men. You will
(25:25):
face a criminal who is, according to our boats, miss dustful,
ruthless and dangerous, and he's always prepelled for the worst.
That was true, as Mio would later find out, Sucers
imagine Jewish agents around every corner. To carry out the mission,
Neo had to get close to this guy to form
a real relationship, maybe even a friendship. This was deeply
(25:48):
painful for him. The butcher was exactly the kind of
man who forced his parents to the concentration camps. But
why didn't sad mates man dead? There were thousands of
ex Nazis walking around Europe South America. Why zookers and
why now you read got to that you wanted Meo
and Michael to know the reason that the butcher had
(26:10):
to die. At that particular time, he started talking about
an anniversary that was approaching in about eight months. On
May eight, the world will mount the twenty years since
the victory of the Nazi Germany, and there are already
voices and not in Germany alone, would say that it
(26:34):
is time to look forward, to do a line under
the events of the past, to forget the Nazis and
to apply the statute of limitations to the crimes. That
was the real reason for the mission. It turns out
that in the German government had decided that all cases
(26:56):
of murder would be given a twenty year statute of limitations.
If you killed someone, state would have twenty years to
open a case against you. If they didn't, you were
free forever. You couldn't be indicted, you couldn't be prosecuted,
and you couldn't go to jail. Of course, in the
(27:18):
government had no idea that someone named Hitler would be
born in Austria and that the Holocaust would happen, and
that six million Jews and millions of other victims would
be murdered by their successors. They couldn't imagine something like
the Third Reich was beyond them. The kinds of murders
they imagined were the kind we know today, crimes of passion,
(27:39):
one person killing another person, not of greed or momentary
rage or whatever, what you might call a garden variety murder,
not Auschwitz m But by nineteen sixty four, the Germans
(28:03):
had grown tired of hearing about the war. There had
been the Nuremberg trials in and there had been others
since then. The guilty had been punished. In their view,
people wanted to move on. Opinion polls showed that fifty
seven percent of Germans were in favor of the Statute
of Limitations. All it had to do was pass the
German Parliament and it would become law. But Israel's leaders
(28:31):
were determined that this would not happen. They protested to
the German government, but that really went nowhere. You Reef
told me that they believed the statute was going to pass,
and that meant two things. Any escape Nazi hiding in
Europe or in South America, and some people believe there
were thousands of them, would go free. They could never
(28:51):
be brought to trial. This included the worst of the worst,
the actual killers who shot us at the pits and
put them into the gas chambers. I found this whole
backstory to be a little surreal. Honestly, I had no
idea that Germany's leaders had ever thought about doing this.
It seemed incredible to me that they seriously considered giving
(29:12):
an amnesty to mass killers. But they did. And Massad
and many others suspected that if the statute passed, it
would be a signal to start winding down the trials
of the Nazi war criminals who had been indicted. It
would be the end of the hunt for those responsible Germany.
They just wanted to forget. They wanted the guilt and
(29:33):
the stories of what happened at the camps to be over.
So this is why Israel had come up with the mission.
Your reefs started talking about the statute and he got
a little emotional. It is absolutely inconceivable that tens of
thousands of Nazi war criminals who never paid for the
(29:53):
Reinos crimes should now be able to call out of
their hiding holes and spend their best of their lives
in peace and tranquility. It's been only twenty years since
the release of the survivors of the Death Games, and
we owe it to them and to the six million
who did not survive and are unable to avenge themselves.
(30:18):
We must thwart this shameful process of the Statute of Limitations. Hi,
this is Stephen Talty, host of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher.
The folks that help me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts,
(30:38):
have just launched another podcast that I think you'll like.
It's called Backstaged The Devil in Metal, a deep dive
into the history of metal music, filled with never before
heard interviews and stories from some of the biggest names
of music, including Black Sabbath to this priest, Ben Helen,
and many others. It's outrageous, raw and surprising at times.
(31:02):
Backstage The Devil in Medal is out now. Follow the
show on Apple Podcasts, I Hired Radio app or wherever
you listen to your podcasts. You've obviously felt the mission
was justified, but he admitted it was something of a
long shot. First, Mio had to get to Zukers, this
(31:23):
ex soldier who went around armed and on the lookout
for exactly what meal was a MASSAD agent to trust him. Second,
get him out of Brazil. Third, he had to get
him to Chile or Uruguay on some pretext and lead
him into a trap where the killed team was waiting. Finally,
the entire team had to get out of the country
without getting caught. After Zukers was dead, Massad would announce
(31:48):
it to the world, reminding everyone, particularly people in Germany,
that these kinds of Nazi monsters were still out there.
The agency had to do this before the Statute of
Limitations came up for debate the German Parliament the following March.
That gave them about six months, and then they had
a hope that the publicity and the shocking crimes that
(32:09):
the butcher had committed would convince enough German legislators that
the amnesty could not happen. The Statute of Limentations would
be voted down. That was the end game. It was
a pretty long string of things to happen in a row.
If the chain was broken, at any point the operation
would fail, but it was the best idea that Massad had.
(32:30):
If we're succeed in the operation we are now preparing,
will once again put the feel of death into the
hearts of tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals. We'll
do everything in our power to make the rest of
their lives miserable. They will feel their own shadow, they
(32:51):
will not dare to leave their homes, and they will
have continuous night mills of anonymous assassins, the offspring of
of innocent victims seeking their revenge. This was interesting to me.
You Reeve was saying that even if Massad carried out
the mission and the Germans still went ahead with the statute,
(33:12):
the death of Herbert Sucres would have meaning because it
would serve as a warning any Nazi killers could never
be sure they would be safe again. So it would
be a kind of life sentence of fear, of waiting
for the knock on the door. But that was a
pale imitation of what the survivors and millions of other
people around the world really wanted, true justice. The men
(33:34):
went over some other details you Reeve talked about suckers crimes.
I'll get to those things in episode two, because we
actually have the testimonies of survivors describing what they saw,
and I'd like you to hear them. You Reeve didn't
mention one more thing. He pointed out that there was
a difference between other Nazi fugitives like Ada Aikman and
(33:55):
people like Herbert Sukers. Aikman was one of the masterminds
of the Holocaust, but he never shot anyone. He had
gone to visit concentration camps, but he kept his distance
from the victims. He didn't have actual blood on his hands.
But Sucris was at the opposite end of that spectrum.
According to your reeve, he shot women and children, among
(34:15):
other things. We are dealing here with the despicable saddist
who actually enjoyed torturing his victims and meldling innocent people.
And this Sokos as the ROOTSBA to give interviews to
Brazilian magazines and claimed that he is innocent, that he
has no idea what anyone would want with him, and
(34:38):
after telling everyone about his innocence, he prays his s
S uniform with great pride before the Commons. This is true,
and it's one of the crazy details that drew me
to this story. Most Scape war criminals changed their names
when they fled to South America or other countries. Herbert
(34:59):
Sucers didn't. He not only arrived in Brazil under his
own name, he actually sought out Jewish leaders in Rio,
told them how he'd saved some of their people during
the war. We'll get to that part. But I couldn't
believe it when I first heard it. Every other Nazi
on the run I've ever heard about had assumed a
false identity. Joseph Mengela went by the name Wolfgang Gerhardt.
(35:22):
Aikman had called himself Ricardo Clement when he was living
in Argentina. It was common sense if you were one
of the most wanted men in the world, the first
thing you did was find a new identity. But the
butcher apparently didn't do that. Could he have been so
delusional or so self confident that he hadn't even bothered
to get a fake passport? It seemed incredible to me.
(35:46):
So the butcher wasn't only guilty in the eyes of
Israel's leaders. He was laughing at them, taunting the survivors.
Why would seekers do that? Some of his supporters actually
pointed to this fact to prove his innocence. Why would
a guilty man keep his own name if he'd done
such terrible things. At this point, it seemed to me
that Sucers was either innocent or mentally unstable in some way.
(36:10):
Maybe the risk taking that had made him into the
Latvian Lindbergh had also made him reckless later in life.
I just didn't know. There was one other reason I
found later on that Suckers had been chosen as the
Massad's target. Months before Mio went to that Paris apartment,
a meeting had been held in Israel the leaders of
the various intelligence agencies. The subject was Nazi officers who
(36:34):
still remained at large. During the meeting, someone read out
the list of escape criminals. When he got to Herbert Suckers,
the head of the country's military intelligence Directorate collapsed. His
name was a Haran Yariev. He wasn't in a relation
to Joseph your Reeve, Mio's boss. It turned out that
this man's family had lived in Latvia when the war came,
(36:56):
and the butcher had helped murder them. This personal reaction
helped move Suker's name to the top of the list.
He was a mass killer. He apparently had no remorse,
His whereabouts were publicly known, and he had killed the
loved ones of someone high up in the Israeli government.
He was perfect in a way. Zukers would be the
representative of all the Holocaust killers. The meeting in Paris
(37:21):
was coming to an end, but before the three men
went their separate ways, there was one last question they
had to decide. Would Mio go on the mission alone?
For would Massad send a small stocking and protection unit
with him. Mio spoke up immediately, I prefer to work alone.
I'd rather work without tales or protection. My god feeling
(37:45):
tells me, said, such an operation can be carried out
only alone, me against the target. Mio would later say
a big team could have endangered the mission. Suckers was paranoid.
Why give him a reason to believe he was being
followed by a bunch of dark haired men who just
might turn out to be Israelis. There was probably another reason,
(38:08):
as I later found out, but I'll save that for
another episode. When Mio was actually in South America. The
last thing you reeve did wu show MEO the files
on Sukers. It was, I wrote in my book a
thin stack of pages, thin due to the fact that
so few Jews had been left alive to speak about
(38:31):
Herbert Suckers. These pages represented about half a dozen testimonies.
The exact number isn't known. The tray Suckers crimes during
the war collected from eyewitnesses during the late nineteen forties
and early fifties. Some of these accounts were barbaric, others
oddly moving. In one story, Zuker speaks to a young
(38:53):
girl in Yiddish. They have a short pleasant conversation before Zukers,
for no apparent reason, pulls out his handgun and executes
her in cold blood. In another account, Zucker saves a
woman that he knew to be Jewish, risking his own
life to do so. This collection of testimonies added up
(39:15):
to a curiously fractured, incomplete portrait of Herbert Suckers, whose
life had been larger and stranger than NEO could have
ever imagined at that first meeting. It would take many
years and the survival of one obsessed Jewish woman to
tell it in full. One survivor later wrote, Zuckers is
a fascinating historical figure full of tremendous contradictions. Before they left,
(39:41):
the three Massad agents agreed on a code name for Zukers.
They would be sending telegrams and letters with invisible link
and you Reave ordered that the butcher's real name not
be used in any of them. If some of their
correspondents was discovered, he could be tipped off and the
mission would be over. So they chose a substitute would
refer to him as the late one, as in the deceased.
(40:04):
Was there a little joke? After that the meeting broke up.
Mio strolled back to his apartment in Paris, where his
family was living at the time. He had to tell
his wife they'd be moving again in case Mio was
caught in Brazil and exposed as a spy. Massad wanted
his family to change apartments. It was for their own safety.
(40:26):
His wife had been through this before. Being in Massad
meant that he'd often be gone from months at a time.
He missed birthdays anniversaries was part of the job. So
that was the mission. Mia was to travel to Brazil
impersonating an Austrian businessman named Anton kunz La. There he
would get to know Herbert Sukers. How Yurev didn't say
(40:49):
that would be up to Mio. He then had to
get the butcher to leave the country and travel to
another part of South America where the other team members
would be waiting. Reason it had to be another country
was blowback. If Israel assassinated the butcher in Brazil, there
were thousands of Jews living there who might suffer the
consequences threats, bombings, whatever. And if the Brazilian police caught
(41:13):
Meo or one of the other agents, that would be
a disaster too. It was a right wing military government
who knew what they might do. They might hang Meo
or put him in jail for decades. Either of those
would be an embarrassment for Israel. They didn't want that
to happen. Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, Herbert Sucres was
(41:40):
tending to his boats and a small marina on a
man made lake in South Pawlo. Winter in the Southern
Hemisphere was almost over. He was hoping the summer would
make him some money. He had no idea who Mio
was or that the Massad was after him. But the
butcher did know one thing, or he believed it. He
leave that his victims had not forgotten him. Four years before,
(42:04):
Sod had kidnapped Adolph Eichmann and Argentina put him on trial.
I mean, who escaped the normery more trials by playing no,
South America receives justice and the hands and the people
who will be unabled. The kidnapping had scared Sukers. He
put a barbed wire around his house, bought a German
shepherd to patrol it. He assembled the collection of guns
(42:25):
to protect himself. He's basically living inside a fortress. But
Seekers went further. He went to the Brazilian intelligence agency
to appeal for protection. They were called DPS, and they
had a bad reputation for kidnapping and killing anyone who
posed the military regime. After his visit, Brazil issued a
(42:46):
warning to anyone that might think of kidnapping Seekers. This
would not be tolerated. They were talking to Israel. Your
reeve had warned me Oh that his target was on guard.
In fact, it went way by on that. At one
point before the operation began, Suckers had promised his family
that he was ready if the MSSAD comes after me.
(43:08):
He told them, I will die before I let them win.
Meo had been warned, but he really had no idea
of who he was actually going up against. Good assassins.
(43:31):
Hunting the Butcher is a production of Diversion Podcasts in
association with I Heart Radio. This season is written and
hosted by Stephen Tulti, produced and directed by Scott Waxman
and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis.
Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial direction from Scott
(43:52):
Waxman and Mongesh At ticket Or Editing, mixing and sound
designed by Mark Francis with the voices of Armory Angele,
Andrew Polk, Steve Rautman, and Stefan Drudnitsky. Theme music by
Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks to
Oran Rosenbaum at U t A
Diversion podcasts. This is a story about a spy and
a murderer. I first heard about it a few years
ago when I was reading a book about Massad, the
(00:28):
Israeli spy agency. I do a lot of that reading
about espionage. I've always loved spies. At one point, I'd
even wanted to be one. When I graduated from college,
I thought about applying to the c I A. Some
of my classmates were doing it, and I thought, why not.
Maybe I could live in a foreign city, Berlin or Cairo.
(00:51):
It would be an adventure. But then I realized I'd
make a pretty terrible spy. First of all, I'm not
really good at keeping secrets. I'm not especially good under
pressure either, And some of the questionable things that the
CIA had done around the world, Yeah, that played a
role too. So instead, I joined the Miami Herald newspaper
(01:13):
and became a journalist. Years later, I ended up writing
about spies, even a couple of books. I loved their world.
The idea of one man or one woman playing this
invisible role in history and doing it with a kind
of flare. Espionage is important, but it's also just cool.
(01:36):
So in this book, I was reading about Massad a
few years ago. The author mentioned in operation I'd never
heard about. It was unlike any of the missions I
had studied in a few important ways. My first thought was,
this is weird. I was immediately hooked. I think it's
fair to say that in the history of espionage, this
case of the undercover agent and the man known as
(01:59):
the book Ture of Latvia is unique. It still has
all the things that fascinate me about spies, the tradecraft,
letters in invisible ink, intrigue in places around the world,
in this case Paris, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Montevideo, Uruguay, and
Rio de Janeiro. There were recondissions, disguises, fake passports, shooting contests,
(02:25):
a kill team training in a specially martial arts called
krav magaw. There was a body and a leather trunk,
and a drug that one agent takes so he doesn't
sweat and appear nervous. There's a psychiatrist who tries to
psychoanalyze Nazis Hitler even makes an appearance. But there are
(02:46):
even otter things too. What makes this story so different,
first of all, is that it's about an assassination plot,
which are usually bad things. When I think of assassinations.
I think of some awful moments history. I think about
Lee Harvey Oswald and Deely Plaza in Dallas, President of
the United States, and as he turned left, two or
(03:07):
three shots rang up Sir Han, Sir Hand and Robert
Kennedy lying in a pool of blood. Martin Good. I
think about Jeans Ray and Martin Luther King Jr. On
the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. I have some
very sad news for all of you, and that is
(03:29):
that Martin Luther King and was shot and was killed
tonight and the start of World War One when an
assassin killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But this was something different.
This was the story of the spy was going to
(03:49):
try and kill someone for a very good reason, to
prevent crimes against humanity, and to close the chapter on
something that happened in the spy's own life. This mission
was personal, at least the agent who was the lead operative.
His name was Mio. Again, this is unique. Spy missions
(04:14):
are never personal. They're not supposed to be. They're supposed
to be clinical, unemotional. This operation was like that for
some of its architects. But it wasn't like that at
all for MEO. It also had a target who had
first read seems completely evil. His name was Herbert Suckers,
(04:36):
and he betrayed people who had once spend his friends
and neighbors. He led them to their desks at gunpoint
and sometimes killed them point blank. The machine gun he
had on his hands the blood of literally thousands of
innocent victims. These were people, some of whom had really
(04:56):
admired Herbert Suckers, thought of him as a hero, which,
oddly enough, he'd once been. All of this is wrapped
up in World War Two and the Holocaust and genocide law.
The effects of the mission are still with us today.
It's had this secret impact on our lives that nobody
(05:18):
really knows about. I couldn't get this story out of
my head, so I wrote a book about it. It's
called The Good Assassin. After the book was published in
two thousand nine, honestly, I thought I was done with
the whole thing. It's spent two years looking into the mission,
traveling to Israel, interviewing MASSAD agents, pouring through archives in
(05:41):
Latvia and Brazil and Israel, totally immersing myself. I was
done with it. What else was there to say. Apparently
something Because I kept thinking about the main characters. I
had questions about them, puzzles I hadn't been able to
solve in the book. But I just couldn't get out
of my head. And my book had brought people out
(06:03):
of the woodwork were contacting me, giving me new information,
things I'd never heard before. But we're slowly helping me
to peel away the layers and get closer to the
core of this story. At first, I thought, forget it.
No way am I going back to all that. The
Nazis crimes were so horrible. I didn't want to revisit them.
(06:25):
I didn't want to wait through all that violence again.
But after a few months I changed my mind. Maybe
I could solve those puzzles that were still bothering me,
put them to rest. I realized I had to try,
So that's why I'm here doing this podcast. I'm glad actually,
because the story of the Hunt for the Butcher of
(06:48):
Latvia wasn't what I thought it was. It was even
stranger than I had first imagined. What I found surprised me.
So let me tell you about the spy. His real
name was Yakov, my dad, but everyone called him Mio.
(07:11):
And there are a few things you should know about
Mio right off the bat. First of all, he was Jewish.
He'd grown up in Germany in the thirties as Hitler
was just beginning to gain power. As a young boy,
Mio so Nazis marching in the streets. He listened as
his teachers began repeating Hitler's lies. It seemed to him
that violence was in the air. The mission in Brazil
(07:34):
and later Puruguay was so personal for me, or because
of his childhood, because of his background. That's Gad Shimron.
He's a former Massad agent who knew me. Oh well.
I met him in Tel Aviv when I went to
research this story. No, I mean he was born in
so that's called What's up time. It was a German
(07:56):
town to a very German Jewish family. I mean, his
father was a very famous doctor, wearing the iron cross
of the Germany Burial Army and for his gallant service
in the First World War as a medical officer on
the front Light and his parents regarden themselves as pure Germans,
(08:18):
Jewish Germans, but Germans. And when the Nazis came to
Barrow in thirty three, and the father said, nothing he's
going to happen to me, because I'm what they call
it German front kempt further, which means frontline soldier, and
he felt, you know that in the it's a wave
of anti Semitism, but it will it will die away,
and nothing will happen me. On the other hand, as
(08:40):
a teenager he went to school, he was exposed to
the terrible expressions of anti Semitism and investigations of Jews,
and he came to his parses said I'm not going
to stay here, I'm going away. So Mea was worried.
(09:06):
He didn't want to be in Germany anymore. He saw
bad things coming. He asked his parents if he could leave,
and finally, when he become a teenager, they let him
go to Palestine, which would later become Israel. Then they
managed to arrange for him a scholarship in a very
good and famous high school in Haifa, and Mio went
(09:28):
away at the age of what he was fourteen maybe fifteen,
went away from his family alone to a new country
with a new language, with a new atmosphere and friends, etcetera.
And he grew up in this and h then the
Second World broke out, so Mio spent the years before
World War Two safe and sound. When the war came,
(09:51):
he volunteered for the British Army and saw some action,
but he never made it back to Germany. His parents
sent me a postcards letting in know they were okay.
They were still in Germany, hoping for the best. But
then the postcard stopped and Meal knew that something had
gone terribly wrong. And all his correspondence and the vacation
(10:15):
this family was cut off, but totally, and only later
after the war he learned that his parents were both
of them were burned in Nazi concentration camps. And it's
true that you know the Nazist game his father the
honor of because it was iron cross the front. Kemper
(10:36):
the game in the honor of being on the last
transports being sent from breast Law to the concentration camps.
I think in night Meal always regretted not being able
(11:01):
to help his mother and father escape. He had nightmares
about them. He was a private guy, so it's not
like he would tell you about it, but that feeling
of not being there when his parents needed him most,
it never left him. After his military career was over.
Mea was recruited by Massad, these really spy agency. He
(11:23):
was a patriot, so he agreed to join. I'm Steven
Talty and this is good assassin's hunting the butcher. So
(11:49):
he's the first months to find and not being put
forward trial, the second thought, most to find, and lastly
and healing. We must swoll was this shameful causes the
end of a trail of blood and horror, the end
of a man whose name will be written in it
for me Episode one, The Spy and the Murderer. The
(12:26):
second thing you should know about Meo was that he
didn't look like a spy. I mean he really didn't.
At the time our story takes place the mid sixties,
he was in his forties. He was overweight, he was
balden ing. He looked maybe like an accountant or a
vice president of a bank. And when he spoke, his
voice was a little high. He was shy, and he
(12:47):
found it hard to talk to people. If you got
to look at him, you wouldn't be impressed. Even Mio's
son told me that when I met him in Israel,
he'd walk right past my father. He said, I never
think twice about at it. In the early sixties, MASSAD
was just beginning to gain a reputation around the world.
Its operatives were tough, physically fit, methodical. Some of their
(13:11):
missions were controversial, and they remained controversial today, but very
few people doubted that their agents were among the best
in the world lethal when they had to be. That
wasn't meo, It just wasn't a skill set. His skill
set was looking boring anonymous. When he assumed a false
identity for a mission, that became his real identity. Mia
(13:33):
was known for diving into his cover stories with conviction.
That was a little scary. His son told me that
when Mio left on a mission, he wasn't their father anymore.
He become this different person. That Meal was a legend.
Here's get him wrong again, Gad. He looks like a spy.
He's tall, lean, handsome. If he played a secret agent
(13:55):
in a movie, you'd believe it. In our conversation, Gad
stressed one thing about me, how he could disappear into
a character. He had this special characteristic of being able
to dive into the person he was supposed to be
for this mission, which is not that easy. You know,
people don't understand how difficult it is to really ignurse
(14:19):
in yourself all the necessary characteristics for playing the new
person you are using for the operation and neo. First
of all, he was, of course it was very intelligent.
He knew how to improvise what was a good actor.
But also he had a very good cosmopolitan European background,
(14:40):
which man. He spoke German fluently, of course, very well English,
very well French. And they say that he for many
years he held the Mossade record for a false stolen
acquired identities. That he had more than a hundred sixty
different identities during this time. That she's quite a number.
(15:05):
Some agents hate going undercover. Pretending to be someone else
can get stressful, especially when one slip could lead to disaster,
even death. But Meal actually seemed to look forward to
these kinds of missions. He liked becoming other people. This
is what Meal had to say about playing a role.
We've had an actor read me as parts, but these
are direct quotes in his own words. In my daily life,
(15:31):
I was quiet, introverted man, not particularly bushy or demanding.
It's a minute I on the two K a mission
I would become different person. I felt confident, even assertive,
and had the capacity to strike up conversations and gain
(15:51):
the trust of people that I met. So Meo didn't
look like a spy, but he was really good at
the work. By the sixties, Mio had made himself into
one of the best undercover ages in the world, but
he still had a lot of guilt about what happened
to his mother and father. He left them at the
key moment, the pain lingered, and that's what makes the
(16:13):
next part so hard to believe. Imagine your Meo and
one day Massad calls you into a meeting. You don't
know what it's about, but it turns out they have
a mission for you, a chance to get justice for
your mother and father and for the other six million
Jews murdered during the war. The mission is simple, to
(16:36):
arrange the death of one man, a Nazi killer named
Herbert Zuckers. Zukers had been an aviation hero before the war.
People called him the Latvian Lindburgh. In his own way,
he was just as unusual as Mio was. There's a catch,
of course. The mission isn't going to be easy. The
man you're going after is suspicious, like really suspicious. He
(17:00):
sees assassins around every corner. It's going to be dangerous.
It's possible that you might not come back. But it
really is a once in a lifetime chance, something that
many of us perhaps dream of writing the wrongs of
the past, a chance in a way, at redemption. So
(17:22):
bo I was pretty confident. I understood him. Who doesn't
want a second chance to make things right with your
loved ones, not to mention the larger picture getting justice
for the six million. But even after spending all those
months doing the research for my book, I still didn't
get the other main character, Herbert Sukers. Yes, he had
(17:45):
colluded with the Nazis and committed horrible war crimes. But
why had he changed from this respected pilot would traveled
to Palestine and even praise what he observed there to
this monster? What had driven him to transform, to betray
so many of his countrymen? And importantly, why did Sukers
(18:06):
have supporters around the world even today? Why did some
people believe he was innocent? They were certainly critics of
Assad that said they were wrong to have gone after him.
Sucers was a puzzle, a dark, twisted puzzle, and I
had to figure him out. So let me tell you
(18:27):
about that meeting where Mio learned about the operation, the
meeting that changed Meal's life. Of course, spy missions are secret,
that's kind of the point. But in looking into this
operation I found something odd. Years afterwards, Mio talked publicly
about it. Massad must have given their permission. How he
convinced them to do that, I have no idea. It's
(18:49):
very rare for any spy agency, let alone Massad, to
sign off on an agent telling their secrets. But you'll
hear his words and that of the other agents, and
even the target. We've got an actress to read some
of their words where recordings aren't available for once, you'll
get to hear the inside story of a spy mission
from beginning to end. So it's September one, nineteen sixty four, Paris,
(19:17):
where Mio lives. The meeting is set for that morning.
September is a great time to be in France. It's
cool and everyone has just returned from their August holiday,
so everyone has a little color. He refreshed. Meo walked
the streets on his way to the meeting. He was
enjoying the day. He was also looking for tales during
(19:40):
the Cold War Paris wasn't the favorite city for spies.
That was probably Berlin. The city was still populated by
operatives from many different agencies, and Mio had to make
sure none of them was following him. Neo stopped in
front of the Radio France building checked out the pedestrians
people lingering on steps. When he was satisfied that he
(20:02):
wasn't being tailed, he started walking again. He found the
building he was looking for. He was on the Avenue
day Verside, a beautiful boulevard, one of the city's richest neighborhoods.
He ducked into the lobby, waved at the concierge, and
went up to the apartment where his boss was waiting.
Joseph your Ree met him at the door. Uri was
(20:23):
the head of Massad's Special operations unit code named Cesarea.
Caesaria still exists today. It's an elite undercover unit that
plants agents in foreign countries. It sends its men on
sabotage missions, and it plans and carries out targeted killings
of those that Israel considers to be its enemies. It's
secret and what it does is highly classified. Youri was
(20:48):
a charming guy, very loyal. He had lots of friends.
He was popular inside Massad. He knew how to work
a room. Nea was the opposite. He was an outsider
at the agency and it bothered him. When he opened
the door, he read said something strange. From this moment onwards.
Your name is Anton Kunzla with a battle style to
(21:11):
getting used to it. Neo didn't say anything. As I
mentioned before, he was a quiet guy. He walked into
the room and saw another agent, Michael not his real name,
sitting at a small table. He nodded to Michael sat
down towards some coffee. You, Reid followed. The three sipped
the coffee before getting down to business. You reeve got
(21:32):
it started. You must be wondering why I summoned you
him and in such a heavy we have received final
confirmation about the Nazi woe criminal who lives in one
of the South American countries. Israel had decided to hunt
down one of the Holocaust's most savage killers. The target
(21:54):
was Herbert Suckers. He was a Latvian in the small
country that sits between Russia and Germany. I'll tell you
more about Sukers in the next episode. But even though
he became a war criminal, He'd led a fascinating life
before World War Two. He'd been a world class aviator,
the Latvian Lindbergh. He'd flown aircraft he'd built himself through
(22:14):
sand and snowstorms all the way to the East coast
of Africa, Japan, the Middle East. He was brave, adventurous.
But that was before the war. When the Germans invaded,
Zukers had changed. According to Massad, he'd become a beast,
a mass murderer. He helped Hitler's forces killed thirty thousand
(22:35):
Jewish men, women and children, and actions that wiped out
over of Latvia's Jews. The survivors gave him a name
after the war, the Butcher of Latvia, and Massad had
decided to hunt him down. There was another reason for
the mission, which I'll get into a little later. It's
something that I found almost unbelievable, a part of history
(22:57):
that seems so bizarre to me that it couldn't have
been ill. But in nineteen sixty four, the Israelis decided
that Herbert Sukers had to die. Your Reef gave MEO
a little background on the butcher. He fled to Brazil
ninety six after the war ended, with his wife and children,
and one unexpected guest I'll tell you about later. Your
(23:19):
reef told the two agents that the butcher was living
in a house sal Paulo. You know, a small boat
rental business. The cater to the locals and to tourists.
Meal listened to your reef talk. He looked calm. You
always looked calm. But he wasn't calm. He was thinking
about the past. I felt my health race and my
(23:40):
adrenaline level skyrocket. Suddenly, so many different thoughts ran through
my mind. I released a deep breath. Having been born
in Germany and having lost both parents in the Holocaust,
I needed no lengthy, detailed explanations of that terrible time.
(24:01):
My father, a well known doctor in our hometown, served
during the First World War as a medical officer in
the Prussian Army, and for his service in the cruel
battles of Balato on the Western Front, he was awarded
the Iron Cross. This fact did not stop the Nazis
(24:21):
from sending him to his death entat concentration camp. My
mother was deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered as
part of what the Nazis and their battles turned the
final solution to the Jewish problem. For me, Oh, this
(24:43):
would be a mission unlike any of the others had
gone on. This was personal. He knew that MISSAD didn't
carry out many operations against escape war criminals. Israel was
only sixteen years old at the time, and there are
other things to worry about, mainly its own survival. The
agency didn't have time to settle old scores. In fact,
(25:04):
this would be the first time we know about that.
His spies were going to set out to kill a
Nazi war criminal at a Fike men they kidnapped, but
Sucers they were determined to kill you. Reeve added some
more details. Sucers was six or four years old, but
he was still a powerful guy, built like a tank.
You reve described him to the two men. You will
(25:25):
face a criminal who is, according to our boats, miss dustful,
ruthless and dangerous, and he's always prepelled for the worst.
That was true, as Mio would later find out, Sucers
imagine Jewish agents around every corner. To carry out the mission,
Neo had to get close to this guy to form
a real relationship, maybe even a friendship. This was deeply
(25:48):
painful for him. The butcher was exactly the kind of
man who forced his parents to the concentration camps. But
why didn't sad mates man dead? There were thousands of
ex Nazis walking around Europe South America. Why zookers and
why now you read got to that you wanted Meo
and Michael to know the reason that the butcher had
(26:10):
to die. At that particular time, he started talking about
an anniversary that was approaching in about eight months. On
May eight, the world will mount the twenty years since
the victory of the Nazi Germany, and there are already
voices and not in Germany alone, would say that it
(26:34):
is time to look forward, to do a line under
the events of the past, to forget the Nazis and
to apply the statute of limitations to the crimes. That
was the real reason for the mission. It turns out
that in the German government had decided that all cases
(26:56):
of murder would be given a twenty year statute of limitations.
If you killed someone, state would have twenty years to
open a case against you. If they didn't, you were
free forever. You couldn't be indicted, you couldn't be prosecuted,
and you couldn't go to jail. Of course, in the
(27:18):
government had no idea that someone named Hitler would be
born in Austria and that the Holocaust would happen, and
that six million Jews and millions of other victims would
be murdered by their successors. They couldn't imagine something like
the Third Reich was beyond them. The kinds of murders
they imagined were the kind we know today, crimes of passion,
(27:39):
one person killing another person, not of greed or momentary
rage or whatever, what you might call a garden variety murder,
not Auschwitz m But by nineteen sixty four, the Germans
(28:03):
had grown tired of hearing about the war. There had
been the Nuremberg trials in and there had been others
since then. The guilty had been punished. In their view,
people wanted to move on. Opinion polls showed that fifty
seven percent of Germans were in favor of the Statute
of Limitations. All it had to do was pass the
German Parliament and it would become law. But Israel's leaders
(28:31):
were determined that this would not happen. They protested to
the German government, but that really went nowhere. You Reef
told me that they believed the statute was going to pass,
and that meant two things. Any escape Nazi hiding in
Europe or in South America, and some people believe there
were thousands of them, would go free. They could never
(28:51):
be brought to trial. This included the worst of the worst,
the actual killers who shot us at the pits and
put them into the gas chambers. I found this whole
backstory to be a little surreal. Honestly, I had no
idea that Germany's leaders had ever thought about doing this.
It seemed incredible to me that they seriously considered giving
(29:12):
an amnesty to mass killers. But they did. And Massad
and many others suspected that if the statute passed, it
would be a signal to start winding down the trials
of the Nazi war criminals who had been indicted. It
would be the end of the hunt for those responsible Germany.
They just wanted to forget. They wanted the guilt and
(29:33):
the stories of what happened at the camps to be over.
So this is why Israel had come up with the mission.
Your reefs started talking about the statute and he got
a little emotional. It is absolutely inconceivable that tens of
thousands of Nazi war criminals who never paid for the
(29:53):
Reinos crimes should now be able to call out of
their hiding holes and spend their best of their lives
in peace and tranquility. It's been only twenty years since
the release of the survivors of the Death Games, and
we owe it to them and to the six million
who did not survive and are unable to avenge themselves.
(30:18):
We must thwart this shameful process of the Statute of Limitations. Hi,
this is Stephen Talty, host of Good Assassins Hunting the Butcher.
The folks that help me bring you the show, Diversion Podcasts,
(30:38):
have just launched another podcast that I think you'll like.
It's called Backstaged The Devil in Metal, a deep dive
into the history of metal music, filled with never before
heard interviews and stories from some of the biggest names
of music, including Black Sabbath to this priest, Ben Helen,
and many others. It's outrageous, raw and surprising at times.
(31:02):
Backstage The Devil in Medal is out now. Follow the
show on Apple Podcasts, I Hired Radio app or wherever
you listen to your podcasts. You've obviously felt the mission
was justified, but he admitted it was something of a
long shot. First, Mio had to get to Zukers, this
(31:23):
ex soldier who went around armed and on the lookout
for exactly what meal was a MASSAD agent to trust him. Second,
get him out of Brazil. Third, he had to get
him to Chile or Uruguay on some pretext and lead
him into a trap where the killed team was waiting. Finally,
the entire team had to get out of the country
without getting caught. After Zukers was dead, Massad would announce
(31:48):
it to the world, reminding everyone, particularly people in Germany,
that these kinds of Nazi monsters were still out there.
The agency had to do this before the Statute of
Limitations came up for debate the German Parliament the following March.
That gave them about six months, and then they had
a hope that the publicity and the shocking crimes that
(32:09):
the butcher had committed would convince enough German legislators that
the amnesty could not happen. The Statute of Limentations would
be voted down. That was the end game. It was
a pretty long string of things to happen in a row.
If the chain was broken, at any point the operation
would fail, but it was the best idea that Massad had.
(32:30):
If we're succeed in the operation we are now preparing,
will once again put the feel of death into the
hearts of tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals. We'll
do everything in our power to make the rest of
their lives miserable. They will feel their own shadow, they
(32:51):
will not dare to leave their homes, and they will
have continuous night mills of anonymous assassins, the offspring of
of innocent victims seeking their revenge. This was interesting to me.
You Reeve was saying that even if Massad carried out
the mission and the Germans still went ahead with the statute,
(33:12):
the death of Herbert Sucres would have meaning because it
would serve as a warning any Nazi killers could never
be sure they would be safe again. So it would
be a kind of life sentence of fear, of waiting
for the knock on the door. But that was a
pale imitation of what the survivors and millions of other
people around the world really wanted, true justice. The men
(33:34):
went over some other details you Reeve talked about suckers crimes.
I'll get to those things in episode two, because we
actually have the testimonies of survivors describing what they saw,
and I'd like you to hear them. You Reeve didn't
mention one more thing. He pointed out that there was
a difference between other Nazi fugitives like Ada Aikman and
(33:55):
people like Herbert Sukers. Aikman was one of the masterminds
of the Holocaust, but he never shot anyone. He had
gone to visit concentration camps, but he kept his distance
from the victims. He didn't have actual blood on his hands.
But Sucris was at the opposite end of that spectrum.
According to your reeve, he shot women and children, among
(34:15):
other things. We are dealing here with the despicable saddist
who actually enjoyed torturing his victims and meldling innocent people.
And this Sokos as the ROOTSBA to give interviews to
Brazilian magazines and claimed that he is innocent, that he
has no idea what anyone would want with him, and
(34:38):
after telling everyone about his innocence, he prays his s
S uniform with great pride before the Commons. This is true,
and it's one of the crazy details that drew me
to this story. Most Scape war criminals changed their names
when they fled to South America or other countries. Herbert
(34:59):
Sucers didn't. He not only arrived in Brazil under his
own name, he actually sought out Jewish leaders in Rio,
told them how he'd saved some of their people during
the war. We'll get to that part. But I couldn't
believe it when I first heard it. Every other Nazi
on the run I've ever heard about had assumed a
false identity. Joseph Mengela went by the name Wolfgang Gerhardt.
(35:22):
Aikman had called himself Ricardo Clement when he was living
in Argentina. It was common sense if you were one
of the most wanted men in the world, the first
thing you did was find a new identity. But the
butcher apparently didn't do that. Could he have been so
delusional or so self confident that he hadn't even bothered
to get a fake passport? It seemed incredible to me.
(35:46):
So the butcher wasn't only guilty in the eyes of
Israel's leaders. He was laughing at them, taunting the survivors.
Why would seekers do that? Some of his supporters actually
pointed to this fact to prove his innocence. Why would
a guilty man keep his own name if he'd done
such terrible things. At this point, it seemed to me
that Sucers was either innocent or mentally unstable in some way.
(36:10):
Maybe the risk taking that had made him into the
Latvian Lindbergh had also made him reckless later in life.
I just didn't know. There was one other reason I
found later on that Suckers had been chosen as the
Massad's target. Months before Mio went to that Paris apartment,
a meeting had been held in Israel the leaders of
the various intelligence agencies. The subject was Nazi officers who
(36:34):
still remained at large. During the meeting, someone read out
the list of escape criminals. When he got to Herbert Suckers,
the head of the country's military intelligence Directorate collapsed. His
name was a Haran Yariev. He wasn't in a relation
to Joseph your Reeve, Mio's boss. It turned out that
this man's family had lived in Latvia when the war came,
(36:56):
and the butcher had helped murder them. This personal reaction
helped move Suker's name to the top of the list.
He was a mass killer. He apparently had no remorse,
His whereabouts were publicly known, and he had killed the
loved ones of someone high up in the Israeli government.
He was perfect in a way. Zukers would be the
representative of all the Holocaust killers. The meeting in Paris
(37:21):
was coming to an end, but before the three men
went their separate ways, there was one last question they
had to decide. Would Mio go on the mission alone?
For would Massad send a small stocking and protection unit
with him. Mio spoke up immediately, I prefer to work alone.
I'd rather work without tales or protection. My god feeling
(37:45):
tells me, said, such an operation can be carried out
only alone, me against the target. Mio would later say
a big team could have endangered the mission. Suckers was paranoid.
Why give him a reason to believe he was being
followed by a bunch of dark haired men who just
might turn out to be Israelis. There was probably another reason,
(38:08):
as I later found out, but I'll save that for
another episode. When Mio was actually in South America. The
last thing you reeve did wu show MEO the files
on Sukers. It was, I wrote in my book a
thin stack of pages, thin due to the fact that
so few Jews had been left alive to speak about
(38:31):
Herbert Suckers. These pages represented about half a dozen testimonies.
The exact number isn't known. The tray Suckers crimes during
the war collected from eyewitnesses during the late nineteen forties
and early fifties. Some of these accounts were barbaric, others
oddly moving. In one story, Zuker speaks to a young
(38:53):
girl in Yiddish. They have a short pleasant conversation before Zukers,
for no apparent reason, pulls out his handgun and executes
her in cold blood. In another account, Zucker saves a
woman that he knew to be Jewish, risking his own
life to do so. This collection of testimonies added up
(39:15):
to a curiously fractured, incomplete portrait of Herbert Suckers, whose
life had been larger and stranger than NEO could have
ever imagined at that first meeting. It would take many
years and the survival of one obsessed Jewish woman to
tell it in full. One survivor later wrote, Zuckers is
a fascinating historical figure full of tremendous contradictions. Before they left,
(39:41):
the three Massad agents agreed on a code name for Zukers.
They would be sending telegrams and letters with invisible link
and you Reave ordered that the butcher's real name not
be used in any of them. If some of their
correspondents was discovered, he could be tipped off and the
mission would be over. So they chose a substitute would
refer to him as the late one, as in the deceased.
(40:04):
Was there a little joke? After that the meeting broke up.
Mio strolled back to his apartment in Paris, where his
family was living at the time. He had to tell
his wife they'd be moving again in case Mio was
caught in Brazil and exposed as a spy. Massad wanted
his family to change apartments. It was for their own safety.
(40:26):
His wife had been through this before. Being in Massad
meant that he'd often be gone from months at a time.
He missed birthdays anniversaries was part of the job. So
that was the mission. Mia was to travel to Brazil
impersonating an Austrian businessman named Anton kunz La. There he
would get to know Herbert Sukers. How Yurev didn't say
(40:49):
that would be up to Mio. He then had to
get the butcher to leave the country and travel to
another part of South America where the other team members
would be waiting. Reason it had to be another country
was blowback. If Israel assassinated the butcher in Brazil, there
were thousands of Jews living there who might suffer the
consequences threats, bombings, whatever. And if the Brazilian police caught
(41:13):
Meo or one of the other agents, that would be
a disaster too. It was a right wing military government
who knew what they might do. They might hang Meo
or put him in jail for decades. Either of those
would be an embarrassment for Israel. They didn't want that
to happen. Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, Herbert Sucres was
(41:40):
tending to his boats and a small marina on a
man made lake in South Pawlo. Winter in the Southern
Hemisphere was almost over. He was hoping the summer would
make him some money. He had no idea who Mio
was or that the Massad was after him. But the
butcher did know one thing, or he believed it. He
leave that his victims had not forgotten him. Four years before,
(42:04):
Sod had kidnapped Adolph Eichmann and Argentina put him on trial.
I mean, who escaped the normery more trials by playing no,
South America receives justice and the hands and the people
who will be unabled. The kidnapping had scared Sukers. He
put a barbed wire around his house, bought a German
shepherd to patrol it. He assembled the collection of guns
(42:25):
to protect himself. He's basically living inside a fortress. But
Seekers went further. He went to the Brazilian intelligence agency
to appeal for protection. They were called DPS, and they
had a bad reputation for kidnapping and killing anyone who
posed the military regime. After his visit, Brazil issued a
(42:46):
warning to anyone that might think of kidnapping Seekers. This
would not be tolerated. They were talking to Israel. Your
reeve had warned me Oh that his target was on guard.
In fact, it went way by on that. At one
point before the operation began, Suckers had promised his family
that he was ready if the MSSAD comes after me.
(43:08):
He told them, I will die before I let them win.
Meo had been warned, but he really had no idea
of who he was actually going up against. Good assassins.
(43:31):
Hunting the Butcher is a production of Diversion Podcasts in
association with I Heart Radio. This season is written and
hosted by Stephen Tulti, produced and directed by Scott Waxman
and Jacob Bronstein. Executive producers Scott Waxman and Mark Francis.
Story editing by Jacob Bronstein, with editorial direction from Scott
(43:52):
Waxman and Mongesh At ticket Or Editing, mixing and sound
designed by Mark Francis with the voices of Armory Angele,
Andrew Polk, Steve Rautman, and Stefan Drudnitsky. Theme music by
Tyler Cash. Archival research by Adam Shapiro. Special thanks to
Oran Rosenbaum at U t A
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